High Spirits rises before drifting back to Earth

"If City Center Encores! was originally founded as a kind of musical-theater seance devoted to raising the dead, or at least the long-forgotten then High Spirits is about as literal a mission statement as you could ask for. The rarely revived 1964 musical opens with a seance and arrives at City Center like a theatrical ghost itself: long unseen, mostly forgotten, and faintly glowing with the promise of pleasures from another era. That alone makes High Spirits worth summoning."

"With music, lyrics and book by Hugh Martin (Meet Me in St. Louis) and Timothy Gray, High Spirits adapts Noel Coward's drawing-room farce Blithe Spirit, in which novelist Charles Condomine hosts a seance for research purposes only to find himself haunted quite literally by the ghost of his glamorous first wife, Elvira. The musical follows Coward's plotting closely, padding it out with additional numbers and scenes for the eccentric medium Madame Arcati,"

"Musically, the evening offers real pleasures. The score, largely unavailable on streaming platforms, turns out to be far more enjoyable than its obscurity suggests. Martin and Gray write tuneful, effervescent songs steeped in an early-1960s swing sensibility, and the large, lush orchestra reminds you exactly why Encores! exists. High Spirits may have faded from view precisely because of its fidelity to Blithe Spirit, which remains endlessly revivable:"

High Spirits is a 1964 musical adaptation of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit in which novelist Charles Condomine becomes haunted by his glamorous first wife, Elvira, following a seance. Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray supply music, lyrics and book with tuneful, effervescent songs rooted in early-1960s swing. The score is largely unavailable on streaming platforms but offers rich orchestration and pleasures for listeners. The production requires precision in timing, verbal dexterity, musical confidence, buoyant ensemble work and choreography. Jessica Stone’s Encores! staging presents the piece in an unusually bare format that exposes tensions between farce’s compactness and musical expansion.

Read at www.amny.com